The year, to be sure, hasn't been without a few highs among the lows - Audible UK produced my adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND starring Owen Teale (also in my previous Audible drama ROMEO & JUDE), Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate & Daniel Mays and that seems to have been well received by listeners. You can catch it here....
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Classics/Treasure-Island-Audiobook/B071JSM4H1?ref_=a_pd_Sci-Fi_c8_2_sim_auth
And just a couple of days from now Wireless Theatre Company are going to be producing a piece very close to my heart NIGHT OF THE ORCHID -- but that'll get a separate posting to itself, so watch this space....
And meanwhile myself and my loved ones are going to be moving, leaving behind suburban Nottingham for one of my favourite places in my native Scotland, the beautiful Isle of Arran. Yes - I'm going to have the sea at the foot of my road and mountains and forests at my elbow. A whole new life beckons....
And as part of that new life I'm going to have a crack at bringing my special brand of storytelling to Arran, starting with a performance on Saturday December the 23rd. of my new show THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST.
But, first of all, I'm going to be premiering the show at my two favourite venues here in England, with a performance on Saturday 16th December at No.28 in the Market Place, Belper in Derbyshire....
And then, the very next night, Sunday 17th December at CAT, aka Chilwell Arts Theatre in Nottingham....
That's the posters. What about the show? Well, it's a winter's night ghostly tale in the grand manner of the likes of Charles Dickens & M. R. James. When provost at Eton, Janes used to gather favoured students about him on Christmas Eve to tell them his latest ghostly chiller, a tradition kept alive in the years of my childhood when not a Christmas would go by without the BBC showing a film adaptation of a James ghost story - you could keep It's A Wonderful Life and the Morecambe & Wise Xmas show, these atmospheric shockers were the TV highlight of my childhood Christmases - I can remember being particularly frightened by the adaptation of LOST HEARTS with its ghostly children....
Well, my GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST is a continuation of that tradition. A story of my own creation, it's set in late Victorian Glasgow (where the Church of Scotland had decreed that Christmas shouldn't be a public holiday - it didn't actually become a holiday in Scotland until after the Second World War!) and begins in my native part of the city, in the snow-swept area around Queen's Park as a young homeless woman wanders the streets, searching for shelter while trying to evade a street gang with hostile intentions towards her. But a bit of grand scale seasonal charity comes her way when a Kirk minister offers her food and shelter in his grand house on the edge of the city. A happy ending? Well, not quite - this is a ghost story after all, and in the beautiful house isolated among miles of snowy parkland there might be some ghostly shades of Christmases past emerging out of the snowflakes and shadows.....
So, I think I can offer a thrilling Winter's Tale to all with the nerve to take it. If you want to book in advance for the Belper or the Arran shows, you can book online at www.brownpapertickets.com
Booking for Belper show, 16 December.... - https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3102318
Booking for Whiting Bay, Arran... - https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3114329
And to book for Chilwell Arts Theatre - contact michael@chilwellartstheatre.co.uk or call: 07772053412
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